Actually, none of these old newspaper accounts and materials would have been possible if Joe Bausch hadn't shared the Fulton Public Library site here a few months back which has a ton of old newspapers digitized and searchable online, so I think someone should at least credit Joe for the assist.
It's a terrific site, and I think it's invaluable for finding corroborating evidence.
And as long as this thread was simply about "here's what I found...here's what I think it means...what do others think?" as it seemed in the beginning I was encouraged and even thanked David for presenting it here, so I guess I'm his lapdog too.
It quickly however became a "here's what I found...why didn't Tom and Wayne who are so familiar with Shinnecock find it...I know what it means and need no further input...why didn't Tom and Wayne who are so familiar with Shinnecock find it", which makes one wonder if that's what was intended all along.
At one early point, Tom Paul wrote this;
David:
I did indeed realize that even having just sort of cursorially read your posts. I will definitely reread them very carefully, though. I also just sent you an IM and email about this. I think we have a pretty good track and file on the entire architectural evolution from the beginning of Shinnecock and all their architectural iterations, and I think Shinnecock feels we do too, and not just on the Flynn course. The whole thing with Shinnecock is in the book (I guess that's one of the reasons the book turned into 2,178 pages and counting Wink).
If you want our help with any of this you can have it, at this time, and I sure don't want to see this course and this subject devolve into another Merion or Myopia situation on here. So, I am putting you on notice on this post and on an IM and email just sent that if you want our help on this subject at this time, you've got it.
COLLABORATION!! It really can be a beautiful thing with this stuff we all do and talk about on here!
Sounded like an olive branch to me, but the response was this...
TEPaul,
If you want to give us running updates on what you have finally gotten around to reading, perhaps you should start your own thread for that.
That said, I am a bit surprised that you are just now getting around to reading Mr. Goddard's book, and am also surprised that Mr. Goddard's book is obviously your only source of information on the origins of golf at the club. And if you are only parroting Goddard, a source you hadn't even yet bothered to thoroughly read, then I don't understand a few of your representations:
- What happened to that USGA article you claimed you had? The one that supposedly had covered all of this and figured it all out?
- Why did you hold Wayne and yourself out as some sort of experts on the early origins of Shinnecock, claiming that your unpublished manuscript accurately covered the early origins of the course? It is obvious that you are just parroting Goddard.
- Why did you insist that I should have come to you guys for help before posting above? After the crap you guys have pulled, you have the nerve to claim I should have come to you guys about Shinnecock? A course to which neither of you even belong? And about a portion of the history that you only know from someone else's book?Preposterous.
- And same goes for your supposed offer to help me, and your pleas for "COLLABORATION." While you worked hard to create the impression otherwise, you obviously haven't done any research of your own. So what help could you possibly offer me? Were you going to read me portions of Goddard's book? Were you going to blindly state Mr. Goddards' conclusions as if they were Gospel? Sorry Tom, but I prefer to go straight to the source material, so your parroting someone else's hard work as if it was your own would have been of no real help to me, and is by no means "COLLABORATION." Representing it as such is embarrassing.
Buying a club history in a pro shop does not make you an expert on the history of that club, especially when you haven't even bothered to read it.
As for Mr. Goddard, I have no doubt that generally his history of Shinnecock is excellent. But surely Mr. Goddard understands that sometimes new information becomes available, and such information often leads to a different but more accurate understanding of what really happened. In fact any self respecting researcher and/or historian must necessarily realize this, as it is the basis of what they do. Yet you obviously do not believe it or understand it. You'd rather just cling to your various club histories as infallible sources of absolute and final truths.
This seemed to me to be pretty over-the-top response based on finding a few news articles that only recently became available and easily searchable online and that Joe Bausch was primarily responsible for....
I'm not sure why these things fall into screaming matches, but I think we need to consider the history, so to speak.